The Anglican Primate of Nigeria, one of the most powerful churchmen in Africa, needs to clarify his stance on a Nigerian anti-homosexuality bill he initially supported, which assigns a five-year prison term not only for practicing gays, but also for those who support them. Akinola either needs to publicly renounce, in strong terms, his early support of the bill’s punitive clauses and to amplify the rather tepid concern he later expressed about them, ...
I have a question that may appear to be naive, perhaps even evil, but why does it seem to be universally assumed that homosexual practice should be legal, like a human right? Where is the dividing line between the well being of a society as a whole, vs sexual hedonism. Am I even allowed to frame the question? In this article by David van Biema, he seems to be rethinking his fairly positive article from last month (Feb 19 print edition).
Time Magazine (on-line), 3/8/2007
Awkward as it may be for an outsider to intrude in the doings of a country or a church that is not his own, I nonetheless believe that the Most Rev. Archbishop Peter Akinola has some explaining to do. ...
A few months ago, Nigerian religion expert Abieyuwa Ogbemudia said to my colleague Gilbert daCosta, “It is incredible for any church to even tolerate homosexuality and survive in Nigeria. Your church would be dead in the water.” Akinola, however, has proven himself in the past to be a brave man. He took a strong and important stance against Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo’s bid for an extraconstitutional third term. He needs to be brave again and speak out against the penalties in the Nigerian bill. If he truly has concerns about human rights, he should express them with vigor. Failure to do so ought to prompt his new Virginian congregants to give a second thought to their choice of Akinola as their shepherd. Read it all.